Last year Beth over at Love Laugh Quilt was making the most darling small wall hangings. She's just chock full of innovative ideas and comes up with the best quilted pieces. I admired her little Christmas-y hangings and told her I thought they were just the most perfect, cheerful little decorations.
Well, wouldn't you know, a few days later I got a package in the mail with a couple of pieces of the panel she used of the little retro-clad children playing in the snow. She even enclosed some left over pieces of fabric she had used for the borders.
So using what Beth had sent me and augmenting with some of my Christmas fabric, I made these two festive little "pictures" of my own.
This is the smaller of the two and measures about 7" square.
This one is about 9-1/2" x 8".
I keep them hanging in my quilt studio year round and never tire of looking at them while always thinking of Beth.
When the holiday season comes, I hang one beside the front door and the other one on our bedroom door. Perhaps you might have thought of it as a small favor, Beth, but I've gotten a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of your kindness.
Sending best wishes to all of you for a wonderful Christmas spent with family and loved ones. Merry Christmas!
This past summer my daughter took a small office in our town in which to set up her web design business. There are three or four other rental spaces in the same building and they all go off of a comfortable main lobby. She wanted to have a colorful quilted wall hanging to put on her door that opens out onto the lobby.
I've done two for her so far, the first one being this autumnal/Thanksgiving one and the second a Christmas one that she has up right now.
This is a shot of the full wall hanging which measures approximately 23" x 43". Technically, this isn't a quilted piece in that it's a pre-printed panel. (Or "cheater's cloth" as some people call it.) My daughter saw it and fell in love with it and asked if I would make it into her door hanging. Of course, I said yes even though working on a pre-printed panel isn't my favorite thing to do since the part I like best about quilting is the piecing. The pre-printed panel involved no piecing, just hand quilting. And hand quilting. And more hand quilting!
This is a close-up of some of the side detail.
The leaves on the tree were fun to do.
The center sheaf of wheat.
She wanted the hanging to say "Welcome" so I made this block with the appliqued letters and sewed it over a bottom part of the pre-printed panel. I think it worked out well. If you didn't examine it closely, you wouldn't know it wasn't an original part of the panel.
I'll post pictures of the Christmas hanging soon. Which reminds me, I'd better get started on something to put up there after the holidays! (Hmmm, I'm seeing lots of blue fabrics, I'm seeing snowflakes, I'm seeing sparkling snow drifts, I'm seeing . . . )
How do I jump back into updating my quilting blog regularly when it's been an empty, lonely space for so long? When I'm still not doing nearly as much quilting as I want?
The little blurb in the right hand column of my personal blog (A Home Grown Journal) announcing that I was back in my quilt studio may have been a tad premature. (There is this thing called Christmas and the New Year that tends to throw off normal scheduling for a period each year.)
I've truly missed quilting and visiting with all of you here on my quilting blog. Not only have I not had the time to post these last several months, but time spent in my quilt studio has been limited. Very limited. One of my resolutions for the coming year is to make (and take!) time each day to do more of the things (quilting, quilting and quilting) I enjoy and that nurture my soul. It may have taken me way too long to realize it, but my daily list of Should Dos and Must Dos will never be done. Let's repeat that: It will never be done. If I'm going to have the time I want for the fun things I want to do in this life time, the time to start doing them is NOW.
Wish me luck. I know I'll need it. Change is never easy. Even a good change doesn't feel comfortable at first. I've been a Type A personality all my life and most mornings when I wake up, stupidity continues to reign supreme. I still think at the start of a new day, I can DO IT ALL. If I just work fast enough all morning, I'll have all afternoon to quilt. Except that The List is never done by afternoon time, so I ignore my need to go to my quilt studio where my creativity can thrive.
So, nuh-uh. Nope. No more. I'm going to try my durndest to make a big change. At the end of the day instead of saying, "Oooof, am I tired. I got a lot done today but I'm beat," I want to say, "Look at what I created today! What a high! I feel so energized I can't wait to get back at it tomorrow!"
If I'm not quilting, there's not much to post about on this blog. It will be after the holiday season, I'm sure, before I can implement my big change and wangle regular time in my quilt studio. But it's coming . . . as I hope regular blog posts will be also.
It's good to be back . . . even though it's just this much so far.
I know I shouldn't have done it when I have so many other projects going but I just couldn't stop myself. I've been looking at this method of making a rug for a while now and finally ordered the little instruction booklet and over-sized crochet hook.
Using strips of fabric and a couple of simple crochet stitches it comes out looking like a cross between a braided rug and a rag rug.
This is proving to be tough stuff using fabric strips instead of yarn and Paul Bunyan's mother's crochet hook. Feels like I'm working with a telephone pole.
